Just wanted to shout out some recent awardees from the Caribbean. Beginning all the way back in November with US-based Haitian writer Edwidge Dandicat winning the Nestadt International Prize for Literature, described as the “American Nobel”. For Dandicat, winning has become something of a habit. In recent years, prizes have included the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature (Trinidad and Tobago), the Association of Caribbean Writers Grand Prize for Literature (Guadeloupe), the Langston Hughes Medal, a MacArthur Genius Grant, honorary doctorates from the University of the West Indies, Yale University, and Smith College plus many earlier awards including the distinction of being an Oprah’s Book Club pick.
More recently UK-based Jamaican writer Kei Miller – a past Bocas and Forward prize winner, among other accolades – has been announced as a winner of the Anthony N. Sabga Caribbean Awards for Excellence. We actually mentioned this one before.
Congrats are due as well to Ghana-born, Jamaica-raised, US-based poet Kwame Dawes whose previous awards include Forward, Pushcart, and Hurston Wright plus a Guggenheim Fellowship, among others, is one of three newly named chancellors of the Academy of American Poets.
Congratulations to them all.
As with all content on Wadadli Pen, except otherwise noted, this is written by Wadadli Pen founder and coordinator Joanne C. Hillhouse (author of The Boy from Willow Bend, Dancing Nude in the Moonlight, Oh Gad!, Musical Youth, With Grace, and Lost! A Caribbean Sea Adventure). All Rights Reserved. If you enjoyed it, check out http://jhohadli.wordpress.com Please note that, except otherwise noted, images on this site also need to be cleared if you wish to use them for any purpose. Thanks.
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